Magnetism
by Arctimon
Summary: It only takes one moment for two people to connect. And just like magnets, they can only work well when they're together. Hiro/Karmi, takes place after "Big Problem".


_**Disclaimer:** The Big Hero 6 animated series is owned by Disney Television Animation and any mistakes about biology and magnets is a basis of my exhaustive hour-long research stint._

 _...OK, it was a longer time than that. I'll explain later._

* * *

 _ **Magnetism**_

THUNK!

It was another late night at the Ito Ishioka Robotics Lab. Almost everyone had left to enjoy the weekend, having completed their respective project for the week.

THUNK!

... _Almost_.

"Ugh."

Three guesses who was still there.

Hiro sighed, bringing his head up from his desk. The boy genius was there late, naturally, but not because of his heroic endeavors. No, it was because of something far more treacherous.

Homework.

"I still don't understand this."

He took a glance over at his companion, currently charging in his port. In the midst of their afternoon patrol, Baymax's batteries had run very low, so Hiro decided to make a quick trip back to school to get his charge back and also finish up some schoolwork.

Although it wouldn't hurt for him to just take a little break though, right? It was only eight o'clock; Granville wouldn't be making her rounds kicking people out for another hour.

"Baymax, I'm going to run to the cafe to get a snack." Hiro stood up and stretched. "I'll be back in a bit."

One of his eyes opened as if to confirm his speech, and then closed back up.

* * *

Fortunately, one of the perks of the Periodic Cafe was even when it wasn't staffed, all of the kiosks were still stocked with a various amount healthy and unhealthy treats.

But onion rings were healthy...right?

As Hiro pulled his food out of the air fryer, he reached for the last bottle of ketchup. It was only a couple weeks ago that his Nanodex was malfunctioning and causing all sorts of trouble. He remembered the condiment spilling all over Karmi.

He giggled.

And then frowned.

He hadn't meant to do that, of course. He had tried to maintain some sort of rivalry with the biotech student, especially with her receiving funding from Liv Amara. But she was almost ready to throttle him then. She hadn't, obviously, but the pair fluctuated so often from friendly to apathetic to vehemence that it made his head spin.

THUNK!

…Speaking of heads, that sure sounded like one.

Hiro peered around the corner and saw a surprise: a veritable bastion of papers and right behind it was Karmi. Or at least the top of her head.

 _What is **she** doing here?_ he thought. _She's not normally here this late._

As he could only see her head, he couldn't decipher her condition. Maybe she was busy writing another story. Or maybe she was busy doodling another portrait of her fabled "Captain Cutie". Or maybe-

"I _can_ hear you, you know."

...Or maybe she was listening to him try to creep around the cafe.

Hiro smiled sheepishly, taking his tray over to the girl. "Hey, Karmi."

Now that she was in view, she had her chin resting on the table, a small red mark on her forehead from where the aforementioned head-banging had been. Her eyes were just starting to get bags underneath them. "Hey."

"You're here late. Don't you normally leave at seven?"

"...How do you know that?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that question?"

"What?"

"Never mind." Hiro sat down with his tray and grabbed the ketchup bottle to pour some out. "You seem like you're in a great mood. What's the occasion?"

Karmi sneered. "If you must know, Genius Boy, I'm working on Professor Granville's Thermodynamics homework. I've been at it all day."

"You need some help?" Hiro asked.

"Well, that depends." Karmi propped her head up with her fist, now giving Hiro her full attention. "Are you going to throw a door at me like before?"

"I told you that was an accident."

"Oh, and the ketchup was an accident too? And the table?"

"Look-" Hiro started as he started to wave his hand. He stopped his spiel, realizing that the bottle of ketchup was still in his hand. "Whoops. I'm just...going to set this over here, OK?"

"Mmhmm," Karmi said, an amused eyebrow raised. "What's your flawless explanation, Smart Guy?"

"Would you believe me if I told you I had superhuman strength and couldn't control it?"

For a fleeting moment, Karmi had a stone cold stare going directly at Hiro. She opened her mouth…

"HAHAHAHA!"

OK, that wasn't the response he was expecting.

Hiro patiently waited for Karmi's laughter to calm down. "Are you done yet?"

"Hold on, hold on, sorry." She wiped a tear from her eye, paused, and then let out a tiny giggle. "OK, now I'm done."

He looked down at his phone. "You didn't have to laugh for three minutes."

"The circumstances dictated it." She started writing something down in her notebook. "What are you doing here this late, anyway? Keeping tabs on me?"

"No!" Hiro shouted, a little too quickly. "I had homework, too. Peterson's microbe analysis for Biology. She gave me something to categorize but the stupid thing won't do anything."

"Riveting."

"I don't know what's going on with it!" Hiro said, waving an onion ring around. "There's no spores that I can compare to anything else. Stupid bacteria."

"That's because it's not a bacteria."

He stopped and turned to Karmi. "Pardon?"

"If it's not producing spores, it's not a bacteria or a eukaryote," she continued, not looking up from her notebook. "It's probably an archaea. You should check his rRNA strand for a classification."

"Huh. I...didn't think to do that."

"Of course you didn't. You deal with your marshmallow man all day long that you forget the basics of cell structure. Did you sleep through that in grade school?"

Hiro said nothing as he munched on another onion ring. Karmi, sensing victory, tried to make off with one, but he smacked her hand away.

"Hey!"

"You know, if you wanted one, you could've just asked." Hiro pushed the carton over to her.

"I shouldn't have to. A gentlemen would've offered in the first place," Karmi teased. "But no thanks. I have things that I have to do later tonight."

"Like what?" He stood up to throw away his trash, his next sentence coming from over his shoulders. "Gotta keep your breath fresh to make out with your new boyfriend?"

WHOOSH!

Hiro found himself with a faceful of Karmi, who had sped over to him so fast it was like she had hijacked Go Go's armor.

" _What_?"

He couldn't help but smirk, now that he had her on the ropes. "Look, against my better judgment, I did read your fanfiction. And it's not bad. You know, the whole "being kidnapped by a knife-wielding ninja and being rescued by Big Hero 6 on an iceberg" thing aside. But I don't know which is less believable. That, or him kissing you."

Karmi's face was almost the same shade as the discarded ketchup.

"Hey, I'm just saying." Hiro reached around her body to throw away his trash and started back to the table. "I still don't know what you see in that kid."

"Kid? _Kid?_ " Karmi was incredulous. "He's more of a man than you! Did you see him beat that giant metal lizard thing singlehandedly? Or when he stopped that bank robbery?"

"I'm pretty sure superheroes do that sort of stuff all of the time." Hiro sat back down at the table, but not before his gaze once again had the biotech student whizzing back into his view. And this time, she had an evil grin on her face.

"Oh, _I_ get it!"

"Get what?"

"You're jealous of him!"

"What?" Now it was Hiro's turn to be dumbfounded. "I am not jealous of him!"

"Just face it, Hiro." Karmi whipped her hair back, triumphant. "You just want me all to yourself because I'm so smart and funny and beautiful-"

"And totally not conceited at all," he mumbled under his breath.

"And he totally would go for a girl like me." She stared off into space, her cheeks getting rosier. "He knows my name, you know."

"A lot of people know your name."

"Yeah, but _he_ does."

Hiro sighed. "You're delusional. You know that, right?"

Karmi looked like she was going to explode as she gripped her pencil in her fist. Hiro quickly began to scout for the nearest exit…

"You're right."

What? "No, that...that was over the line. I shouldn't have said that; I'm sorry," Hiro backtracked.

"No, it wasn't." Karmi slouched in her chair. "I have to be crazy to believe he would think about me that way. I'm not anything special to him."

There was a instant where both of them were still, Hiro pondering what to say in response. His thoughts, unfortunately, were immediately interrupted by Karmi starting to...stab the table with her pencil.

"How can I even deal with that if I don't have any idea how to solve-"

THWACK!

"This-"

THWACK!

"Stupid-"

THWACK!

" _PROBLEM_!"

"Hey hey hey!" Hiro recoiled as he tried to avoid collateral damage. "What did that table ever do to you?"

Karmi snarled in response.

"O...K. Let's try again," Hiro said. "Look, I had problems with my earthquake demo, remember? But I got through it, even though it took me a while. You can get through this."

"I can't." Karmi lowered her head even further. "You have the brain to figure things out. You're special like that." Her hand started to shake as she fought back tears. "I'm not."

Suddenly, she felt pressure on her hand. She looked up to see Hiro had put his on hers, undoubtedly trying to calm her down.

"We both know that's not true." Judging by his voice, her hand wasn't the only thing that was shaking. "Look, you may be a little annoying sometimes, and overconfident, and you really should learn to be more open-"

"You... _are_ going to compliment me at some point, right?"

" _But_ , _"_ Hiro continued, "You're special in ways that I'm not. Did you forget what happened last week? Your nano-receptor idea is being funded by Liv Amara, for goodness sake! You know how much I would love to have that?" Hiro rambled on. "Remember what you said earlier? You were right. I am jealous of you. You've accomplished a lot, and you should be proud of that."

Karmi looked down at the table, clearly not convinced.

"It's like you said before, Karmi. You're a really smart person. And I'm sure you're funny. And I know that you're-"

He stopped mid-sentence, blushing furiously. Now it was his turn to break eye contact.

"Hiro."

It was so soft that he almost didn't catch it. He returned his gaze back to Karmi, where he could see the twinge of pink creep up her face.

"What were you going to say?" she whispered.

He scratched the back of his head, trying desperately to come up with the right words. "I...I'm not really good at this sort of thing. At all."

"Try." It wasn't a question.

"All I'm going to say," Hiro started, looking her straight in the eye," Is that when you stood up against that...whatever that thing was...during the ceremony...it was very brave of you. Jumping into something headfirst without thinking of the consequences. It was impressive."

He paused for a second, then blurted out his next sentence.

" _AndyoulookedreallygoodinthedressyouworeOKIsaidit!_ " He crossed his arms and turned away, his face flushed.

Karmi's hand was still warm from his touch. No doubt that her face was the same.

She let the quiet settle for a little bit before turning to face him again. "Hiro..."

Instead of a red-faced genius, she saw him mulling over one of her sketches, circling things with her pencil.

"Hey!" She tried to get her things back, but Hiro held up a finger, mouthing out a few words. Karmi had no choice but to wait.

"Have you tried a samarium-cobalt magnet for your project?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Changing the subject! Have you tried one?"

Karmi was surprised. "Why? Those are ancient. I'm better off with a neodymium one."

"Are you, though?" Seeing her confused face, he continued on. "It's a theoretical thermoreactor, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you're going to want something that has good temperature stability. Yeah, neodymium magnets are good at that, but you also need something that's going to keep its magnetic field at a higher temperature. Samarium-cobalt ones have almost triple the Curie temperature." He held up one of her graph papers. "You have a good design here; the inner workings just need some adjusting."

"...When did you have time to read all this?"

"I have the same class, Karmi. I already finished the project earlier in the week." Hiro saw her lack of confidence and tried to smile. "Look, crunch the numbers. I guarantee you that it'll work. You can even come by the robotics lab if you want to try making a test magnet; I'm sure that I have some spare cobalt around."

Karmi took the paper and pencil out of his hand and proceeded to plot out a few equations. Hiro took a quick look over her shoulder. "You might want to check your coercivity equation just to make sure all of your variables are-"

She shot him a raised eyebrow, and he backed away. "Whoops. Sorry." He shifted his gaze to the clock on the wall. "Oh geez! It's almost nine! I gotta go!"

Karmi wrote in one last variable and was excited to see her equation match up. "Hey, I think this is going to work! Hey, Hiro, when do you want me to-"

She looked up to see Hiro had already left the Cafe.

"Come?"

Sighing, she started to gather up her things. It would only be a few minutes before Professor Granville would start shooing people out.

The last paper she picked up was her diagram on her thermoreactor. She took a moment to look at it, seeing Hiro's circles and lines between equations. Maybe there was something-

Wait.

Karmi looked closer at her coercivity equation. Underneath the Blotzman constant was one word and a few numbers:

 _Monday  
1:00_

"...Huh."

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Writing about a new shipping is one of the most challenging things you can do. I will say that _Big Hero 6_ is a show that is almost criminally unadvertised, like a lot of Disney shows. The show itself is...good. There's a lot that I'll use DeviantArt to say at a later point, but for the most part I think it hits all the right notes.

And then we get to Karmi.

I am under no false impression that Karmi is a somewhat contentious person in the fandom. Some say she's great. Others say she's pretentious and doesn't belong in the show. I don't agree with that. Again, I'll speak to that later, but I think she does have a place.

Oh yeah, I've learned more about rare earth magnets and archaea and magnetism in these past few weeks (this story was suppose to come out after "Fan Friction", but got pushed back) that it's making my head spin.

I may or may not have a follow up to this story, which will be published as a stand-alone instead of another chapter. I also have two other relatively long stories that I'm working on with _BH6._ I can't say whether this is going to be my new "thing", but it's piqued my interest enough. I do also have to get used to writing everyone in character. This story's a good start, but it can always get better.

For anyone that is coming across this and haven't read any of my other stuff (P&F and Teen Titans mostly), I would encourage you to go read them.

As always, read and review, if you like. Until next time.


End file.
